• Question: why do people have phobias ?xxxxxxxxx

    Asked by amystevenxxxx to MarkF, Mark, Michael, Panos, Sarah on 15 Jun 2010 in Categories: . This question was also asked by benm.
    • Photo: Panos Soultanas

      Panos Soultanas answered on 14 Jun 2010:

      Probably to do with some bad experience in early life. I am scared of snakes. I remember when I was young in my gradad’s farm I was out in the field with my grandmother and I saw a poisenous snake right next to me. my grandmother managed killed it (poor snake…) before it bit me but ever since then I developed a phobia for snakes.

    • Photo: Sarah Burl

      Sarah Burl answered on 14 Jun 2010:

      A phobia is an irrational fear of something. Most phobias are based on a previous experience that someone has had creating a fear the next time they see the same thing. However there is some evidence that phobias can be genetic so if a member of your family has a phobia you may also have this fear. This has been shown in identical twins that are raised separately having similar fears.

    • Photo: Mark Travis

      Mark Travis answered on 14 Jun 2010:

      I am not a big expert on this I am afraid, more of a psychology question which I know little about! A phobia is all related to being stressed in a given situation that doesn’t generally cause people to be stressed (e.g. open spaces). Such phobias can be brought on by bad childhood memories, genetic predisposition or other physical factors like biochemical imbalances in the brain. So, basically you can get phobias for a number of reasons.

    • Photo: Mark Fogg

      Mark Fogg answered on 14 Jun 2010:

      That’s a question about psychology and is not something I know very much about, so I would suggest you find a psychologist, sorry! Please let me know if you find an answer, I’d be very interested.

      I have a phobia about getting up the mornings 😉 and my wife hates spiders. What about you?

    • Photo: Michael Loughlin

      Michael Loughlin answered on 15 Jun 2010:

      Often because of an earlier experience with an item…say they fell in some water when very young, they might have a phobia of water. Also how others act…if adulats go “Arrrgh” when seeing a spider then young children are likely to think that is how we are meant to act.

      I would imagine, although I don’t know, that a lot of the way they develop actually helped our ancestors in recognising and avoiding danger

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